Events 2007

The “From Spark to Pixel” exhibition will present developments in contemporary art involving the large-scale use of digital and interactive media. The technical possibilities in this field have given this area of art a more international dimension than that of almost any other. Thus the exhibition will feature works both by renowned and as yet unknown artists and groups of artists from all over the world. Works by pioneers and works that are being shown in Europe or Germany for the first time or have been specially developed for the Martin-Gropius-Bau, will enable visitors to discover spectacular forms of artistic expression and radical changes in perception in the relation between the observer and the moving image. Immersive and interactive approaches feature frequently in the artists’ strategies.

Sensational finds of recent years from Xinjiang, China’s most northwestern province, are to be seen in this exhibition. The oldest object dates from 4000 years ago. The focus is on the people who have inhabited the area along the silk routes around the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan desert since the Bronze Age. The Taklamakan, the world’s second largest sandy desert, has a distinct continental climate characterized by extreme aridity. This aridity, with which those who live along the silk routes have had to struggle for millennia, is the reason for the unique state of preservation of the archaeological finds.

The Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin is showing a multi-faceted retrospective of the work of the photographer Roswitha Hecke. Her “secret views” of foreign cities and countries, of unfamiliar milieus and familiar faces, reflect her “secret view” of the art of photography: affection for the subjects, a sense of the right angle, an ability to share feelings of amazement or amusement, and an unobtrusive proximity.

On the 150th anniversary of the birth of the French photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927) a grand retrospective of his works will open at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin on 28 September 2007. The exhibition was mounted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. A selection of 350 works from Atget’s extensive oeuvre will be on display.

Between 1897 and 1927 Atget, like no other photographer, captured the old Paris in his pictures. His shots show the city in its various facets: narrow lanes and courtyards in the historic city centre with its old buildings, of which some were soon to be demolished, magnificent palaces from the period before the French Revolution, bridges and quays on the banks of the Seine, and shops with their window displays. He photographed stairwells and architectural details on the façades and took pictures of the interiors of apartments. His interest also extended to the environs of Paris.

From June 15 until September 10, 2007 the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin will be presenting the major Cindy Sherman retrospective arranged by the Jeu de Paume in Paris. The exhibition comprises works produced by the artist between 1975 and 2005.

The American artist Cindy Sherman is one of the leading representatives of staged photography. In her photographs she uses her body as a vehicle for creating all sorts of roles and staging masquerades. By combining the roles of film director, main protagonist and photographer, she blurs the strict dividing lines between posing and viewing, between object and subject. 

In spring 2007 the exhibition Angkor – Sacred Heritage of Cambodia will be shown in the Martin-Gropius-Bau. For the first time the great Cambodian art will be presented in an exhibition in Berlin. Since it became known in the mid-19th century it has fascinated the culturally interested public in Europe and filled them with wonderment.

Since then, the name Angkor has stood for unfathomably vast, mysterious temples, spread out in the Cambodian jungle – temples that can even today evoke the splendour that was once theirs.

The photographer Ré Soupault was at the heart of classical Modernism in both Berlin and Paris. Born Meta Erna Niemeyer in Bublitz, Pomerania, in 1901, Ré Soupault was one of the most important female photographers of the 20th century. After training at the Bauhaus in Weimar (1921–1925) under Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee and others, she became part of the European avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1923/24 she worked with the Swedish avant-garde film-maker Viking Eggeling on his film “Diagonal Symphony”.

Brassaï, who was born in 1899 in what was then the Hungarian town of Brassó, emigrated in 1920 to Berlin, where he studied at the Academy of Art in Charlottenburg and got to know artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka and László Moholy-Nagy. In 1924 he moved to Paris, where he began his career not as a photographer but as a journalist working mainly for German-language magazines. His friend André Kertész took photos to accompany his articles. It was his journalistic work that eventually led him to photography.

The Gabriele Münter Prize for Fine Artists Over 40, the only prize in the world for female artists over the age of forty, was awarded this year for the fifth time. The jury selected Leni Hoffmann as the winner from among over 1,450 entrants, being particularly impressed by her extremely colourful works involving the use of plastic modelling material. Her hand-made, structured areas of colour change the surroundings of the respective work of art, turning walls or windows into pictures or sculptures.